GM Lays Off 600 IT Workers; Replaces Them With AI Talent

General Motors has cut hundreds of salaried IT roles as it reshapes its technology workforce around artificial intelligence (AI).

The move is less about simply shrinking headcount and more about replacing older skill sets with AI-native engineering capabilities.
 

TL;DR

 

• GM laid off about 600 salaried IT employees, representing more than 10% of its IT department.
• The company is still hiring for IT roles, but is prioritizing AI-native development, data engineering, cloud engineering, model development, prompt engineering, and AI workflows.
• The restructuring follows months of white-collar cuts and leadership changes across GM’s software and technology teams.

 

GM Cuts IT Jobs To Prioritize AI-Native Talent

General Motors has laid off more than 10% of its IT department, affecting roughly 600 salaried employees, as the automaker retools its technology organization for a future increasingly shaped by AI.

The layoffs were confirmed by GM, which framed the decision as part of a broader transformation of its Information Technology organization. “GM is transforming its Information Technology organization to better position the company for the future,” the company said in an emailed statement.

However, this is not a straightforward headcount reduction. A person familiar with the layoffs said GM continues to hire for IT roles, but the company is now looking for different capabilities. The focus has shifted toward AI-native development, data engineering and analytics, cloud-based engineering, agent and model development, prompt engineering, and new AI workflows.

In simpler terms, GM appears to be looking for workers who can build AI systems from the ground up, not just employees who can use AI tools to speed up existing tasks.
 

 

GM’s Software Team Faces A Wider AI Shake-Up

The latest cuts come after a series of white-collar reductions across GM over the past 18 months, as the automaker moves resources toward higher-priority initiatives, including AI. In August 2024, the company cut about 1,000 software workers.

GM’s software organization has also seen major leadership changes since Sterling Anderson joined the company in May 2025 as chief product officer. Anderson, who co-founded autonomous trucking startup Aurora and has deep experience in the autonomous vehicle industry, has been pushing to consolidate GM’s separate technology businesses into one organization.

That shift was followed by the departure of three senior executives from GM’s software team last November, including Baris Cetinok, senior vice president of software and services product management; Dave Richardson, senior vice president of software and services engineering; and Barak Turovsky, a former Cisco executive who spent just nine months as GM’s chief AI officer.
 

 

GM Hires AI Leaders As Enterprise AI Demand Changes

GM has also mad moves to bolster its AI-focused leadership.

It hired Behrad Toghi, previously of Apple, as AI lead in October.

The company also brought in Rashed Haq as VP of autonomous vehicles , who had spent five years at Cruise, GM’s self-driving vehicle company that was later shuttered, as head of AI and robotics.

For the broader industry, GM’s restructuring shows what enterprise AI adoption may look like beyond software subscriptions and productivity tools. Large companies are not only adding AI to existing teams, they are rebuilding teams around skills such as agent development, model engineering, data pipelines, cloud systems, and AI-native workflows.

GM’s latest move makes one thing clear: for major enterprises, the AI race is becoming a workforce race too.